The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country — I know, because I am one of them.

What silliness. President Obama stated the obvious and the true: the “them” refers to Americans who “have Muslims in their families” and Americans who “have lived in a Muslim-majority country.” No one disputes Barack Obama has Muslims in his family — his Indonesian stepfather was Muslim. No one disputes that Barack Obama has lived in a Muslim-majority country: as a child, he spent some years living in Indonesia.

But did Barack Obama declare himself to Muslim in this quote? Obviously not.

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About the authorJim Cook

I haven't been everywhere, but I've lived lots of places in the USA: the North, the South, the East, the West, and places in between. Every place I've been, I've seen acts large and small of kindness, callousness and disregard. Here we are. What will we do?

Obama said I am one of them because HE is the Muslim in the family. Spin it all you want. Remember the apology tour? Remember,I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.

I notice there are no quotation marks in your comment, Anthony. That’s because they’re made up quotes.

You claim that Obama said of Muslims, “I am one of them.”

That’s not what Obama said. The actual words out of Obama’s mouth were: “The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country — I know, because I am one of them.”

You claim that Obama said, “I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.”

He never said that. What he actually wrote, in the Audacity of Hope, was “Of course, not all my conversations in immigrant communities follow this easy pattern. In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific assurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.”

It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection. These are the times when maps fade, old landmarks crumble and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.